Monday, 21 June 2004

I finished my PADI Open Water Diver course over thw week-end by doing the open water dives at Wraysbury Dive Center. The weather was great and the dives fun. This small reservoir has been set up especially for dive training. It is 14 meter deep at its deepest and has a few wrecks, such as a bus, a London black cab, a camper van, etc. Now I just can't wait to go on holidays and make good use of my newly acquired diving skills.

If you need a specialist appliance, such as an intranet search engine, you probably find that it's impossible to get it for a reasonnable price. You can choose a professional product with extensive support but it will cost you a fortune. You can put together open source solutions on a dedicated box but you might not have the skills to do so and maintenance will end up costing you a lot. Pre-Emptive are here to solve this problem. They can provide you with a "solution in a box", i.e. they will provide you with a computer that has all the right bits configured and running to solve your problem and that you can just drop into your network. The acquisition cost is low because the solution is based on open source technology; maintenance is minimal because Pre-Emptive does it for you. Hence a low TCO and a happy CFO.

Winbledon 2004 has just started and, as usual, the rain is part of the festivities. If you want to support you favourite star, the BBC sport academy gives you the ultimate fan accessory in the form of a face mask of your favourite player. Well, ok, right now they only have Federer, Henman and Myskina so you'll have to support one of them three.

Friday, 18 June 2004

On a similar subject from the previous post, here is a great article on DRM and why it is A Bad Thing (tm). It is very clear, well explained, definitely very worth reading even though it is quite long.

Some music companies have been introducing copy blocking mechanisms on music CDs that mean they are impossible to read in a PC CD drive. Alledgedly, it is meant to reduce illegal copies. The first artist to use this mechanism was Céline Dion who released a European edition of her A New Day album that could potentially crash your computer. Other artists who used this technology include Eminem and Velvet Revolver whose copy-protected CD shot to number 1 in the US. Now, does it mean that people have been buying it because they can't rip it or just because they like it?

Whatever the reason is, I think this is a very stupid way to improve CD sales. I personaly refuse to buy a CD that is copy protected for the simple reason that I want to be able to enjoy the songs on my Palm while going to work on the tube or on my computer at home when my stereo decides to pack up, which has happened twice in 3 years. And I'm not going into the potential damage to my computer or the data it contains if the CD actually makes it crash. This is just plain stupid.

Contrast this with the attitude of artists like Garbage and Dido whose respective CDs Beautifulgarbage and No Angel include extra goodies, a song reconstruction game for the former, a couple of video clips for the latter, that are available when you put the CD in a PC drive. So rather than protecting their CDs against technology, they actually use the same technology to provide their fans with material that makes the CD more valuable and therefore more attractive to buy for people who might otherwise have downloaded it from the net.

Maybe the music industry will one day learn to listen to their customers and embrace technology rather than fight it? We can dream but at least some artists understand it and they are definitely the ones who will see the colour of my money.

spiked has an interesting article on why being too cautious can put us at risk when we follow advice that has been given without full understanding or that is not adapted to our local situation. The author argues that in cases where the information is not sufficient or adapted, we are better of taking a risk than following cautionary advice. In practice, it is consistent with what Bruce Schneier says in his book Beyond Fear where he explains how to evaluate risk in day to day situation so that we can do what we want to do while taking risks that we deem acceptable and that we understand.

A simple example of this principle is crossing a busy road. The only completely safe option is not to cross the road at all, which defeats the purpose. The most dangerous way to cross the road would be jaywalking with your eyes closed. Between the two, you have lots of options that will get you on the other side of the road with a probability of being hit by a car low enough that you are willing to take the risk.

One of my colleagues made a terrible beer mistake last night while we were in the pub watching England win 3-0 against Switzerland in their Euro 2004 game. He offered to buy a round and brought me back a Budweiser, while I had been drinking Budvar. Now this is terrible! He claimed he didn't know the difference. This is even more terrible! I can understand that American people might not know Budvar because they've only ever heard of Budweiser. But for a European, Englishman, working in London, where Budvar is easily found, it is inexcusable. I wouldn't mind if the American beer was a reasonable copy of the orginal Czech beer but I find the American one tasteless, whereas the Czech one is one of my favourites. Incidentally, the two companies are aware of the confusion brought by having the same name and have been battling in court in various countries, such as the UK or Latvia, while in Germany, they just wouldn't buy the American brand. Having said that, beer is something the Czech have been doing for ages so they are rather good at it.

Wednesday, 16 June 2004

I just found that PADI provides a Palm application called Go Dive Log to plan and log dives following the rules of the PADI dive planner. I've just installed it on my Tungsten T3 and will try it over the week-end when doing my completion dives for the Open Water Diver certification.

This article on The Register shows that defeating fingerprint sensors doesn't require high-tech or expensive equipment. Of course, fingerprint sensors assume you are going to apply your finger to the sensor, not something that looks and feel like a finger and has a fake fingerprint on it.

As mentionned in the gallery, Shabab Oman means Youth of Oman. She is a superb barquentine that is used by the Sultanate of Oman as an ambassador to other sailing nations. Under sail, she is definitely one of the most beautiful ships I have ever seen and regularly takes part in international sailing events.

Monday, 7 June 2004

I spent a good part of my week-end in the swimming pool at London School of Diving, doing the theory and confined water part of the PADI Open Water Diver certification, which teaches you the basics about diving. I now have to do the open water dives to complete the certification. Hopefully, this will happen in two weeks time. And then the world's my oyster... literally!

Friday, 4 June 2004

Once again, Tim Henman nearly made it but not quite. Coria proved too strong for him at the French open. As one of my colleagues just said: I'd like to see one Englishman win a grand slam during my lifetime but it's not likely to happen, is it?

Apparently, today was not a good day to be traveilling by plane in the UK. But what on earth where they thinking? Doing tests on a live system? Any IT professional worth his salt would tell you this is playing with fire. If you want to do tests, have a test system, that's what they're for. An organisation like NATS should have test systems that mirror the live ones and on which they can perform tests. If they don't, it is gross negligence.

Wednesday, 2 June 2004

Nokia have just come up with yet another fun (or useless might say some) way of communicating. It's called wave messaging and enables you to make a 15 character message float in the air. The BBC has an article that explains how it works in more details. Potentially a great way to find lost friends in big noisy crowds.

Tuesday, 1 June 2004

I went to Northumberland over the week-end and took the train from King's Cross station, which is currently a bit of a mess due to some redevelopment work. On the train, I found a 4-page document that someone had forgotten, entitled The Nine Rules of Arranged Marriage. It was apparently written by someone from Indian origins, who got married through an arranged marriage. The 9 rules (in fact 10 because there are two number 6 rules) are meant to give advice to other fellow countrymen who are considering an arranged marriage. What stroke me is that the advice sounds very much like what you'd say to someone who wants to buy a new car, the way he speaks of elligible women as girls being just an example. Some of the comments also show complete lack of experience in terms of relationship with women. So I showed the document to a colleague of mine who is of Indian origin and just got married through an arranged wedding. His comment was The guy is an idiot. Not just me thinking this then. Now, I'm not making a judgement on the practice of arranged marriage but I just hope people get better advice than what I found in this forgotten document.